As sufficient, quality sleep has been recognized as a pillar of good health and well-being equivalent to a healthy diet and daily exercise, providing memorably great sleep has become a selling point for hotels around the world. A hotel’s focus on sleep can range from simply providing guests with a pillow menu all the way to creating a spa-like retreat devoted entirely to improving guests’ sleep with days devoted to treatments and wellness screenings. (You can read more about sleep tourism in our article linked below.) Providing great sleep to hotel guests requires offering the right pillows, which is where down etc has exceled for over twenty years.
Our Focus on Bed Hygiene Has Made Us a Trusted Partner
Knowing how difficult it can be to choose pillows and bedding for your own home, you can imagine the increased level of difficulty in choosing pillows and bedding for a large hotel hosting all sizes and styles of sleepers. That’s where our decades of experience working with professional housekeepers in top-ranked hotels, spas, and cruise ships around the world comes in handy. We recognize that pillows and bedding must be not only deliciously comfortable, but also hygienic and able to withstand the institutional laundering necessary to remain that way. We’ve spent over twenty years:
1. Designing and Manufacturing Pillows and Bedding for the Hospitality Industry
From our focus on bed hygiene to the quality and durability of our pillows and bedding, we’ve helped thousands of hotel clients to provide the best possible sleep experience for their guests. It was these well-rested hotel guests searching for the pillows on which they’d had great sleep during hotel stays that led us to start our retail website.
Once our hotel clients have selected and chosen the pillows for their guest rooms, they want them to last through repeated laundering. The same is true of our customers at home. That’s why we focus on manufacturing pillows with details like double stitching and German cotton piping for strength and long-lasting durability.
2. Focusing on Bed Hygiene
Although we love designing and manufacturing beautiful and cozy pillows, we recognized that it was critical to consider hygiene in addition to beauty and comfort. We believe quality sleep starts with careful attention to maintaining a clean and hygienic bed. Protecting your pillows and mattresses from dirt, spills, and other contaminants with pillow protectors and mattress pads is paramount.
Whether a pillow is being used in a hotel or in a home, we highly recommend the consistent use of zippered pillow protectors to protect against the sweat and spills to which pillows are subjected and to extend the lives of the investment made in them. We also provide thorough instructions on caring for our pillows to keep them clean and to maintain their structure. Our website customers can find all of our care recommendations on our pillow product pages. You can also read everything you need to know about caring for your pillows in our article linked below.
3. Listening to Our Hospitality and Retail Customers
Collaboration is at the core of our business, whether it is working with hotel purchasing managers and heads of housekeeping or listening to feedback from our retail customers. We listen, learn, and share the latest information and innovations to assist our customers to create the best possible sleep experiences for themselves and their guests.
We created our pillow butler® pillow system for our hotel clients to assist them in providing each guest with their choice of pillow. This system includes a pillow menu for guest rooms, a storage and delivery cart for housekeeping, and a range of pillows to meet the needs of a variety of sleepers. That means different levels of firmness, types of fill, sizes, and styles.
Once we’ve helped the hotel to choose its pillow offerings, we work with the housekeeping staff on how to implement the pillow butler system, including the types of questions they can ask guests to ensure each one receives the right pillows. These same questions apply when you’re selecting a pillow for your home. First, consider your sleep position (stomach, back, or side) as that will determine the firmness of your pillow. Second, decide whether you prefer a down and feather or a down alternative fill. Those two pieces of information can get you far in selecting the right pillow for yourself or to give as a gift. We’ve designed the pillows section of our website to allow you to begin your pillow search with the answer to either of these questions.
After that, you can consider size and style of pillow. Typical sizes for pillows include standard, queen, and king, which are rectangular, but vary in length, as well as the square Euro pillow. There are other shapes, as well, including our unique v-shaped pillow. It’s the perfect shape if you like a pillow under your head that you can hug while you sleep. The size of your pillow is more than an aesthetic decision. Different size pillows serve different functions. While a standard size pillow might suffice for a back sleeper, if you sleep on your side or stomach, you might prefer a queen- or king-size pillow that will allow you to situate your arms and legs more comfortably. As we like to say, Hug It Like You Love It!®
When we’re talking to customers who aren’t sure what they’d prefer on their beds, we begin with those questions. If they’re stomach sleepers, we recommend our white goose down pillow as it’s our softest pillow. For back sleepers, we recommend something with a bit more loft like our 25% down/75% feather pillow. For side sleepers, we recommend our firmer pillows, including our rhapsody wrap or Hyatt double chamber pillow. For those who prefer down alternative pillows, we recommend our aquaplush® polyester pillows in regular or firm, depending upon sleep position. We also offer body pillows and travel pillows so you can sleep comfortably at home and on the road.
4. Staying Current on the Latest in Sleep Health and Wellness
In the last few years, research has made it abundantly clear that sleep is as important to our mental and physical wellbeing as eating healthy and exercising. It might be surprising to learn how a lack of sufficient, quality sleep can affect us in ways large and small. Insufficient sleep is a risk factor for weight gain and depression. It can make it difficult to control emotions and weaken our natural defenses. We think knowledge is power so we look for the ways in which our pillows and bedding can improve sleep health, thereby improving overall health. We then share what we’ve found in our weekly articles.
5. Creating Pillows and Bedding Designed for Great Sleep
Great sleep begins with quality bedding built one layer at a time from the mattress up. That includes a waterproof mattress pad to protect the mattress from spills, a luscious feather bed like those in five-star hotels to provide an added layer of cozy comfort, delicious sheets that work with the bedroom’s aesthetic, a toasty comforter in the appropriate weight, and, of course, a perfect pillow for each sleeper. As the bed is usually the largest piece of furniture in the bedroom, it’s the star of the show and should be dressed accordingly—we recommend a cozy throw.
We look forward to sharing what we’ve learned from our hotel clients to help you to create your own sleep oasis at home.
-Team at down etc
Read more:
Bedding Buying Guide: The Right Sleeping Pillow for Your Head and Your Bed
Everything You Need to Know About Caring for Your Pillows
Is Poor Sleep Causing You to Gain Weight?
5 Ways Lack of Sleep Can Affect Your Mental Health
